1. Field
Subject matter disclosed herein relates to read and write processes of a memory device.
2. Information
Memory devices are employed in many types of electronic devices, such as computers, cell phones, PDA's, data loggers, and navigational equipment, just to name a few examples. Among such electronic devices, various types of nonvolatile memory devices may be employed, such as NAND or NOR flash memories and phase-change memory (PCM), just to name a few examples. In general, writing or programming processes may be used to store information in such memory devices, while a read process may be used to retrieve stored information.
Some types of memory devices comprise a memory cell array partitioned into groups of memory cells, such as pages, blocks, partitions, and so on. In such cases, memory cells within such a group may share common electronic circuitry including sense amplifiers, and row/column decoders, for example. Accordingly, both reading from and writing to such a group of memory cells may involve some common electronic circuitry. In such a case, a pending write operation occurring in one portion of such a group of memory cells may prevent a read operation from occurring in another portion of the same group of memory cells. Such a limiting condition may result in slower read operations and overall reduced performance of a memory device.